The government's drug advisory board is calling for action on "legal highs" containing synthetic cannabinoids.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended a ban in a report it has just sent to the Home Office, called "Consideration of the major cannabinoid agonists". It focussed on the brand 'Spice' - which has …

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Looks like the "ssshhhh!" chemical definitions and recommendation are intended to stop someone buying some (possibly?) interesting and (possibly?) readily available substance for inappropriate uses...

But... if you look at the level of chemical knowledge required to understand the rest of the technicalities I'd bet the appropriate post-grad chemists already know about SsshPice, so I'm not quite sure what the point is...

I didn't know about the potential utility of compounds "“structurally derived from 3-(1-naphthoyl)indole or 1H-indol-3-yl-(1-naphthyl)methane by substitution at the nitrogen atom of the indole ring by alkyl, alkenyl, cycloalkylmethyl, cycloalkylethyl or 2-(4-morpholinyl)ethyl whether or not further substituted in the indole ring to any extent , whether or not substituted in the naphthyl ring to any extent.” but now I do know, I'm not sure what I could do with the information, even if I were so inclined.

Spice...

The stuff is a mediocre high, it's not bad, but it's not great. The thing is, the side effects of it are very mild but here's the side effects of another legal high see which you think is worse.

"Can lead to uncontrollable vomiting, severe poisoning and even death in high doses. Causes an increase of the probability of violent behaviour. Known as the leading cause of depression in young people, known to be an important factor in heart disease and other diseases, prolonged exposure increases the risk of death dramatically"

ALCOHOL!

Spice, causes some heart palpitations and a slight increase in paranoia. It isn't anywhere near as bad as the social and health implications of alcohol.

The government seem intent on stopping all legal highs from the banning of Psillicybin mushrooms, to the restriction of these synthetic cannabinoids. It's a insane situation where they basically want to control everything they can't tax. Also anything that'll make people think more which cannabinoids/shrooms are known to do.

heh

RE: Illegal in the Netherlands?

From what I can tell, weed is also illegal in the Netherlands, if you walk down the street chuffing away you will get arrested. I think the Netherlands has some sort of decriminalised ranking for it, you have to jump through a lot of red tape to get a license to run a coffee shop. Any Netherland residents care to enlighten us as to the real rules regarding this?

4th Recommendation...

The evils of legal highs

The Home Office has yet to respond to the report but told us: "We are determined to crack down on those so called 'legal highs' that pose a significant health risk.

Isn't alcohol a legal high?

Before someone comments on alcohol taxes being a cash cow for government consider this:

Do the tax £'s from alcohol sales offset the financial costs incurred due to policing town centers, cleaning the streets of puke, pulling drunks from RTA's and the NHS costs of treating victims of alcohol abuse and those physically abused by drunks. No amount of cash is ever going to compensate for the social damage caused by alcohol abuse.

The legal highs that the Home office want to crack down on seem totally benign in comparison.

seriously?

spice (gold and stronger, not the plain spice) does work, however it's not as good as cannabis, and has less desirable side-effects - however the government requires that i smoke that because they have banned the much safer (as well as better, so i've heard *nudge nudge* *wink wink*) cannabis, they can't claim to be working to protect peoples health when they ban things that are perfectly safe - hell no government can call itself democratic when it outlaws such huge portions of the population

although even worse is one of my friends, without cannabis he can't do anything but lie there in pain (and no, the NHS can't prescribe him anything that helps - they've tried, best they could do was knock him out), however with cannabis he can lead an almost normal life - unfortunately spice etc are no substitute for his requirements, so although i have no problem using the worse spice to avoid the legal risks, he has no choice in the matter

all the government needs to do is start following their own rules - classify drugs by harm caused, then once cannabis is legalised and alcohol is outlawed your crime problems will also be solved - double bonus! (look at the problem with drunks most cities have, now ask when the last time you saw a stoner smashing stuff up was... and many more people regularly smoke cannabis than regularly go out clubbing!)

As I Recall...

The only reason smoking weed was more dangerous then ciggy's was that ciggy's had a filter and joints didn't. The risk was for lung disease related to inhaling the smoke and had nothing to do with the THC. I am not sure on this next part without doing some research and I am too lazy to do that right now, but I believe that THC is actually less harmfull then Nicotine. Maybe someone else can do the research since I am to mellow to do it myself...

For our safety and health.... As if

So as usual the government claims to be thinking of banning this for our health.

Same as cannabis is banned for our health even though it has not killed anyone directly... (that I know of)

So we must all "for our health" stick to drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco both of which kill thousands and thousands each year.

All this is going to do is increase the profits for the criminals producing drugs of an unregulated quality.

Keeping these drugs illegal is ONLY helping the criminals.

ALL the deaths from drugs due to overdosing from unknown strength, deaths from contaminated drugs and deaths of children having easy access to drugs can be laid directly at the feet of the government.

There is enough proof from alcohol prohibition during the 30's in the USA to prove the link between criminal profits, deaths from badly made alcohol and easy of access for children due to criminals not bothering about the buyers age.

It's not "for our health" it's purely for the benefit of the criminals.

How much are the politicians being paid by the criminals to ignore the facts.

How much are papers like the Daily Mail being paid to print complete lies to distort the populations views.

Legalise, tax it and help keep our children away from drugs and stop people dying from contaminated drugs.

Everyone in the country takes drugs of some form or other... Caffeine (tea and coffee...it's classed as a psychoactive substance), paracetamol, alcohol (glass of wine), anything from the chemist.

Cannabis has been called one of the safest psychoactive substances that humans can take.

How much longer do we have to put up with the lies, the deaths, the lives ruined by a criminal conviction for taking something safer than alcohol, the criminals take our money that could be going towards tax and helping the health service by not having people suffering from contaminated drugs.

Someone's not up on their weed-economics

'If you're paying 20 quid for 3 grams you're being ripped off, badly. £25 should buy you half an ounce (14 grams) of resin and at least a quarter (7 grams) of grass these days.'

... yeah for really shitting block maybe, decent skunk is gonna set you back £25 on the 1/8.

Spice is fucking minging. Tastes like burning fish with some plastic in there for good measure.

How about we stop banning harmless substances and let people exercise choice? I don't ban fatty foods or lambast the fat (and believe me, I fucking hate those pie-scoffing fatties)... so leave the smokers alone, it's OUR choice, not yours.

Slippery slope

Eventually, they are going to have to realize that the most dangerous thing on Earth that alters your mind, destroys your free will, turns you into an automaton, erodes your self-control and self-reliance, is as addictive as heck, .... is politics. And the politicians won't allow us to get rid of politics, because then their empty rhetoric will be openly compared to hollow actors. And the hollow actors are better at it, shockingly.

Mine's the one with the copy of Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" in the pocket.

"legal highs that pose a significant health risk"

"The Home Office has yet to respond to the report but told us: "We are determined to crack down on those so called 'legal highs' that pose a significant health risk."

Alcohol, tobacco & caffeine have been covered ... the other two are fats and sugar. Ban 'em all!

(Before flaming me, I partake in all except tobacco, and even then I smoked from 14 to 28. All things in moderation. No, I don't smoke weed, it just knocks me out. I can nap anywhere, any time, so I see no point in smoking pot. I also see no point in making it illegal.)

Spice is Good

I first tried Spice a few months ago after reading that the government were thinking of banning it - if they are going to ban it, it must be good. It is a perfectly acceptable, if rather expensive alternative to proper cannabis. Longer lasting effect too. It is unlikely to be as safe as cannabis which as everyone knows is safer than alcohol and nicotine. I buy Spice because I have reached the age where I don't know any dealers any more and don't want to buy from the street.

You're all being ripped off

I've never bought weed, but the last transaction I saw was undertaken in the Transkei area of South Africa.

Purchaser produced R20 (approx 4 quid back then). Dealer disappeared for a while and came back with a plastic supermarket bag stuffed with weed and promised to bring the rest the next day (which he did - another plastic bag full).

Ban the Prohibitionist

Whack a tax on it

Just put a tax on it, and all the legal highs.. Make cannabis legal and whack a tax on it too.

Then they might not need to increase the taxes so much on beer and other stuff, whilst the extra revenue would help the economic climate. Police can then focus on the criminals that actually do harm, hurt and steal from people, rather than focussing on some dope heads who, from those that I have met, wouldn't hurt a fly. Win-win-win as far as I can see.

Recognise them for what they are...

The point is being missed here… Anything a government does is not based on logic; it is based on the idea that people should be controlled. Of course government nominates its own staff as controllers… “The control freaks”, you all know this type of person, they seek office as milk monitors at junior school, then they go on to be prefects. When they leave school they become politicians or policemen etc.

What is the best way to control people? That’s easy; make innocuous activities that any average person might partake in, a crime. Speeding (in a car!), smoking pot, aimlessly hanging around (or loitering), encrypting perfectly innocent data (for reasons of confidentiality) etc. etc..

I was reading an article in the Reg yesterday where somebody quoted Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”, which sums it all up…

“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that's the system, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."

Here’s the thing though, these government types are living under a misapprehension, they assume that we all recognise their legitimacy; in the same way that most governments don’t recognise the legitimacy of Northern Cyprus or North Korea, perhaps we should stop recognising our government.

Now, more interestingly, where the f*ck did Mandy get £750,000 to pay off his mortgage?

People want weed

No one would smoke spice if they could just get weed instead. When I went to Japan they don't have much in terms of drugs there. In tokyo I think 2g of weed was going for £80. So I know people there who instead just went out and bought spice for £40 for 3g. I tried it yeah, but its not weed and no it doesn't really feel anything like weed. I think its just a cheap immitation thats full of chemicals we know nothing about, or how they will effect us. Imagine hyper ventilating for 10 minutes and thats probably how you'd feel on spice.

If you look at the places where legal highs are most popular its always in places where real drugs are highly restricted. People want to get high! they don't care if its spice or the next thing that comes along. Open your eyes and legalise something otherwise this will go on forever. Oh and I bet that 4th option was legalisation.